Dracula eBook

Same day, 11 o’clock P.M.—­Oh, but
I am tired! If it were not that I had made my
diary a duty I should not open it tonight. We
had a lovely walk. Lucy, after a while, was
in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some dear cows
who came nosing towards us in a field close to the
lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us.
I believe we forgot everything, except of course,
personal fear, and it seemed to wipe the slate clean
and give us a fresh start. We had a capital ‘severe
tea’ at Robin Hood’s Bay in a sweet little
old-fashioned inn, with a bow window right over the
seaweed-covered rocks of the strand. I believe
we should have shocked the ‘New Woman’
with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless
them! Then we walked home with some, or rather
many, stoppages to rest, and with our hearts full of
a constant dread of wild bulls.

Lucy was really tired, and we intended to creep off
to bed as soon as we could. The young curate
came in, however, and Mrs. Westenra asked him to stay
for supper. Lucy and I had both a fight for it
with the dusty miller. I know it was a hard
fight on my part, and I am quite heroic. I think
that some day the bishops must get together and see
about breeding up a new class of curates, who don’t
take supper, no matter how hard they may be pressed
to, and who will know when girls are tired.

Lucy is asleep and breathing softly. She has
more colour in her cheeks than usual, and looks, oh
so sweet. If Mr. Holmwood fell in love with
her seeing her only in the drawing room, I wonder what
he would say if he saw her now. Some of the
‘New Women’ writers will some day start
an idea that men and women should be allowed to see
each other asleep before proposing or accepting.
But I suppose the ‘New Woman’ won’t
condescend in future to accept. She will do the
proposing herself. And a nice job she will make
of it too! There’s some consolation in
that. I am so happy tonight, because dear Lucy
seems better. I really believe she has turned
the corner, and that we are over her troubles with
dreaming. I should be quite happy if I only knew
if Jonathan . . . God bless and keep him.

11 August.—­Diary again. No sleep
now, so I may as well write. I am too agitated
to sleep. We have had such an adventure, such
an agonizing experience. I fell asleep as soon
as I had closed my diary. . . . Suddenly I became
broad awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense of
fear upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around
me. The room was dark, so I could not see Lucy’s
bed. I stole across and felt for her.
The bed was empty. I lit a match and found that
she was not in the room. The door was shut,
but not locked, as I had left it. I feared to
wake her mother, who has been more than usually ill
lately, so threw on some clothes and got ready to
look for her. As I was leaving the room it struck
me that the clothes she wore might give me some clue
to her dreaming intention. Dressing-gown would
mean house, dress outside. Dressing-gown and
dress were both in their places. “Thank
God,” I said to myself, “she cannot be
far, as she is only in her nightdress.”